Every August for the last seven years some former Lehigh classmates and friends have headed out to Knoebel’s Amusement Park in Elysburg Pennsylvania. It’s no coincidence that Rick Knoebel was one of my fraternity brothers at Lehigh. His family owns and runs the park. Unfortunately having lived in California during most of that time we’ve never been able to go. (Yes, we were here last year, but there’s the little matter of the six-week-old baby demanding attention that kind of got in the way!)

There are a number of cabins right on the park grounds, and our crew took over three of them for the weekend. The Phoenix roller coaster was literally right outside our front door. (Luckily they don’t start running the coaster until about 10am.)

Jack was nice enough to order everyone these stylish orange t-shirts for us all to wear.

Actually, they were quite helpful in tracking down other members of the group in the park (and if we ever get stranded on a desert island we can use them to flag down the rescue helicopter.)

After driving up Friday night, we started the day out with a little breakfast, then headed into the park.

The first ride of the day – the teacups!

Of course we had to break for a little snack.

Then back onto the rides!

Rick took a few of us on a little behind the scenes tour of a couple of the newer rides that aren’t even open yet. The first was the Black Diamond, which is a combination roller coaster / haunted house meant to resemble a coal mining operation. It was fun to be able to walk around inside the building and go into the control room (you know, all those doors that say “Keep Out” and “Employees Only”). The ride wasn’t open to the public when we were there but they were hoping it would be just a couple more weeks.

Here are Jack and Mike taking the cars for a test drive:

Next we got to go walk the track at the Flying Turns ride. This is a ride like a bobsled/luge where the cars don’t actually ride on rails, but on wheels that just ride on the wooden planks. This was really cool because we got to walk all the way to the top on the track itself. This one they’re planning to open next year.

Here Rick demonstrates how the ride is going to work:

After a long day at the park, we headed back to cabins to relax and have some dinner. Here Jack and Mike demonstrate proper BBQ safety techniques. (“You’re only young once but you can stay immature forever”).

After dinner we had a little campfire so we could make the s’mores.

After Bryce went to bed, Sisi and Dada headed back into the park for a couple of last rides before the park closed. The carousel with it’s horses was her favorite.

Sadly the next day was rained out, and since we had two exhausted kids we headed home. But we had a great time while we were there. Thanks Rick for the tour, and thanks Jack for planning the whole event.

On June 28, 2010, at 4:10pm, Bryce Orion Sharp became the newest member of our family. He weighed 7 pounds 2 ounces and was 19.5 inches long. Both mom and baby are healthy and happy.

Our day started on Monday in the pre-dawn hours, when Bryce, after teasing us with false labor over the past several weeks, decided today was the day. We called our neighbor, who had offered to come over and watch Sophie, and then headed off to the hospital.

After they hooked Debbie up to a bunch of machines and poked and prodded her a few times, they decided we weren’t quite ready, but were too far along just to send home. So they told us to walk around the hospital for a couple of hours and then come back.

After we did a couple of laps around the hospital (with a stop every 5 minutes or so for Debbie to double over with pain), we headed back to the maternity wing, where we had made just enough progress to be admitted.

I’ll spare you all of the details (you can call Debbie if you really need to know), but let’s just say after about seven hours of labor our son was born at 4:10pm.

We didn’t know what the gender was beforehand, and I must admit it was exciting to look down and try to get a glimpse of whether it was a boy or girl when he came out.

Everything checked out ok (fingers, toes, etc.). He was very pink and health looking, although his hands and feet were a little purple. Nothing to worry about and they look great now.

After a few minutes with mom, it was time to go get processed. They put some goop in his eyes, took his footprints, gave him a shot, cleaned him up a little bit and put a hat on. Then he got to go back to Mamma for some dinner.

Later that night our friend Kim, who had been watching Sophie all day for us, brought her by the hospital to meet her new little brother. Sophie was very excited to meet him and climbed up into bed to hold him.

Of course Dadda got a chance to hold him too.

After our visitors left it was time for a real bath. The nurse brought Bryce into the nursery and gave him a good scrubbing, getting his hair nice and clean. Turns out to be straight and brownish red. We’re assuming it’s all going to fall out the way Sophie’s did and come back in blonde, but we’ll have to wait and see.

Finally, it was the end of a long day and it was time for everyone to go to sleep (at least for a few hours!)

Since the newest member of our family decided not to make an appearance this weekend, we decided it might be fun to go out and take our last portrait as a family of three. Debbie had found this really cool covered bridge near our house when she was driving home one day.

It turned out to be a nice scenic spot, with people hanging out in the river below the bridge, floating downstream on their inner tubes. The only downside was the fact that it was 95 degrees and 90% humidity, so after about 10 minutes everyone was covered in sweat and ready to go home to the AC.

We did manage to get a few more pictures before everyone melted, which I have included in the album below.